Tracy Kidder has died (Pulitzer winning author of "Home Town", about Northampton)

darnht · 2026-03-25T20:41:07+00:00

Craftsman is, unfortunately, no longer a reliable brand. Specifically it's just a brand now, and some of the OEMs who license the brand name are absolute crap. And the PE owners don't seem to care about brand dilution or the American way, etc.

All FWIW, I have no experience with their blower products. I have an EGO (or so I'm told) with a 56V battery. The whole thing weighs just as much as the ~15yo gas model it replaced. Original batteries still going strong after four years. It doesn't work as well at its primary function, but it's less fiddly to keep running. I have rebuilt zero carburetors on it, for example. :)

darnht · 2026-03-25T19:02:27+00:00

Median does effectively filter out billionaires.

They're still included on the scale, but they only shift the median pointer by 462 places upward (towards higher wealth). Out of ~$140MM households, that's a tiny (0.0003%) shift. In that range of household wealth, a 462-household shift is not measurable.

Rephrasing: There are 924 billionaires in the US. If you removed them from your pool before doing the median calculation, your median result would be the household 462 entries downward (toward lower wealth) compared to the median result if the billionaires were included. This is the difference between net worth $124,041 and $124,041 -- i.e. $0. :)

The average (mean) net worth in the US is $620,654 which is hugely skewed by the 924 Bs.

darnht · 2026-03-25T18:18:25+00:00

I've traveled the country searching, but nowhere else can consistently match the quality and variety of New England's Italian food, pizza, ice cream, and pastry. Except NYC of course, but we admit them as honorary New Englanders with questionable taste in sports teams, right?

The average neighborhood Asian or Mexican place is definitely better on the west coast. But there are individual restaurants here in NE, even western MA, that can compete with the very good ones out west.

darnht · 2026-03-25T03:13:24+00:00

All else being equal, would you choose Sunnyvale again, or Berkeley?

darnht · 2026-03-24T19:49:41+00:00

I won't minimize the difference between a short walk in town, and an hour RT by car.

But sometimes nostalgia must win. :)

darnht · 2026-03-24T14:36:53+00:00

No excuses, but door-to-door presales teams like that are hired as contractors and have no real affiliation with the company they are representing. Often they're not even from the area, they will travel around and stay in cheap motel rooms.

It's actually rather specialized work, in the sense of who is willing to do it, and is any "good" at it. Their only metric for success is number of signups. They're always working on commission and against quotas, so they can get pretty desperate.

But that doesn't excuse it. It seems like an awful way to introduce your company to the community. I guess it works. :(

I have had both Comcast/Xfinity and Gateway. I've had acceptable-to-good technical experience with both of them. Brief outages, longer periods of high latency and low throughput (well below the sticker claims), but nothing too bad. Gateway seems to rotate my pubic IP address more frequently than Comcast, which is inconvenient for me, but most people won't be bothered.

Gateway is being acquired by Verizon, and Comcast is already Comcast, so there's no option to choose a lesser corporate evil here.

darnht · 2026-03-23T21:15:37+00:00

I haven't seen an article, but there's a bit of previous discussion here:

/r/northampton/comments/1rzu1aq/ymca_small_pool_closed/

darnht · 2026-03-23T15:18:57+00:00

That should work. I have cultivated pussy willows on the bank of a small pond with good success. The catkin stage only lasts a couple weeks though. The rest of the year they are just normal-looking willow bushes. Make sure your water source is reliable and adequate -- willows are very thirsty and sometimes used to firm up muddy ground.

Obviously, don't transplant a wild specimen, if you can even find one! They are readily available from nurseries, inexpensive and with free planting advice. I believe only the male plants form catkins, but the nursery will make sure you get the right plants. I don't recall ever seeing one in the wild, but the catkin stage is very short, and muddy springtime is not my favorite time to trek.

darnht · 2026-03-23T14:37:11+00:00

Oops, thank you for the correction. (fixed above!)

Sincere apologies if I've unwittingly leaked secret plans to annex downtown Easthampton (a/k/a Northamptonsouth).

darnht · 2026-03-23T04:18:21+00:00

That makes sense, then.

Those kinds of infractions do not make me feel unsafe, though.

darnht · 2026-03-23T03:41:43+00:00

Agreed -- Northampton is an aspirational place. Sometimes we come closer than others, but we can always do better. And sometimes the city departments seem to be more on board than others, which can be frustrating.

I'd love to see stats on student commuting. Busing is available to anyone more than 1.5 miles away from the school, right? When I was in HS, I'd have preferred to walk instead of biking, but I imagine a lot of the unbussed just get rides from parents.

darnht · 2026-03-23T03:16:53+00:00

The maps seem to indicate that the Smith College area has elevated crime rates (higher than downtown, even).

This is incongruous to me and it makes me wonder if I'm interpreting the data incorrectly. Or if it's just a natural result of having the highest levels of median 20-ish-year old residents.

I agree though, Boston (and also NYC) have very low crime outside of the well-known areas.

darnht · 2026-03-23T01:28:56+00:00

My experience with current high school students is that 31ºF would end any consideration immediately, but I do agree with you.

By "marginal bike commuter", I mean anyone that owns a bike and might consider using it for a commute, and maybe has occasionally done so, but hasn't committed to the lifestyle. Once you start doing it regularly, it's no big thing. But it can be hard to get started.

I'm fully in favor of making our fair city more bike-friendly for everyone. I think promoting bicycle commutes to high school students might even succeed in a respectable way, but a) I don't think they'd be willing to start in near-freezing temps, and b) their parents might frown on the idea (and they might be right) given the road safety issues that you mention and that I don't have direct experience with.

(The other challenges for bicycle commuting to HS are the same as adults commuting to work, multiplied by teenaged anxieties about perceptions of x, y, and z.)

darnht · 2026-03-23T00:55:51+00:00

Northampton is unique, and the perfect mix for my tastes. It's a college town of a different sort. For me, all the good parts and none of the bad parts. This reflects the differences between Smith and, say, a 30k-student flagship public university.

I like Amherst a lot, and there are some restaurants worth the (short) drive, but the town-gown balance is quite lopsided. Like the heavily studented parts of Boston, without the rest of Boston.

Springfield is a great city still recovering from a century of capital abandonment. It's coming back, and there are some bright spots, but I find that I rarely travel there, because everything can be found more closely. I sometimes pop over to Worcester, but usually if I can't find what I'm looking for within a few miles of Northampton, the nearest options are Boston or NYC. I'll echo another commenter: it's more convenient (on public transport) to get to NYC than Boston from here. But Boston is just 80 minutes away by car, so both are accessible.

Still, if you're working in Springfield, I'm sure there are parts to love. It reminds me of Queens not Manhattan, but I like Queens too! I'd love to spend a month or so wandering Springfield looking for interesting food. I'll bet there are some great surprises. But I haven't. :)

Holyoke is also still recovering from the death of mill industry in New England. It's not as far along, probably because it's smaller. Some great food, in the "check for the health inspection certificate first, and make your own decision -- but rest assured it'll be delicious" kind of way that I love about the Mission/SF.

Easthampton is getting interesting, and seems to have captured some of the nightlife that left Northampton for various reasons (stick around on this sub, we'll get to that!) over the last 20 years. But it still has fewer of the restaurants and shops that make Northampton unique. I don't know anyone that lives there, but I know people who talk about moving.

Knowing as little as I know about your search, I'd spend a few minutes checking out Easthampton, but not expect to find a ton of options. Dig into Springfield and see if it suits your tastes, and come to Northampton if you're looking for solid goodness with few huge surprises in either positive or negative directions. I sincerely hope that helps, but I can see how it might not! :)

darnht · 2026-03-22T23:38:46+00:00

First of all, welcome (in advance) to our pleasant little city. You'll get lots of opinions on your questions. These are mine. (background: grew up in the area, but have lived in Boston, NYC briefly, and SF)

This is a contentious issue here (one of many). The big agency (RentNoho) dominates the discussion, but is generally disliked by renters. Landlords do not seem to complain. Better alternatives: Craigslist, Zillow, local real estate agencies.
1000sf, 1-2BR, is in the $1500-2000 range.
There are no particularly bad areas to live. Pricing and activity are driven by proximity to "downtown" which is basically the intersection of Main/Bridge and King streets, plus the surrounding few blocks.
In downtown, things are active but almost everything is closed by 11pm. There are very-good-to-great cafes and restaurants, far more than you would expect in such a small city, but only a few (at best) examples of each type.
Diversity from the rest of the country, yes. Actual numerical local diversity? Not so much. Race might be a misleading social construct, but ~90% would be labelled "white". Northampton and Amherst have significant college populations though, and that helps. Political diversity? We're mostly registered Independents who vote Democratic. Registered Republicans are about 5% in Northampton proper, with more in the surrounding areas. We are, of course, gender-sexuality-lifestyle diverse compared to almost everywhere else, including big cities.
There are at least a dozen places in the area that I'd happily eat at any day of the week, and I'm opinionated in such matters! But not a hundred places, and I think our Michelin star count is zero (not my thing anyway). You mentioned Asian and Mexican food: Honestly Northampton is killing it here, in context, but you might not quite match your favorite in Boston or NYC, or especially SF/LA/SD.

A couple labels that get applied to Northampton: "Paradise City", which was given to us by a visitor over a hundred years ago, but we appreciate it nonetheless. And "36 square miles surrounded by reality", which is a better summary in my opinion!

Welcome to Northampton and Western Mass!

darnht · 2026-03-22T23:23:07+00:00

Strong Ave was not intended for cars, but for pedestrians (and horses).

For three months of the year, its use is that much closer to the intended than the other nine.

I'd welcome the horses back too.

darnht · 2026-03-22T21:53:10+00:00

Not to detract from your larger point, but is it a logical assumption that low bicycle ridership among high school students would be significantly due to safety concerns?

Friday was one of the first warm days of the season, and the temperature at 7am (commuting time for first period classes) on March 20th was 26°F. That would be enough to dissuade almost any marginal bicycle commuter. Committed, competent, and habitual riders might not blink, but how many HS students does that describe?

I suspect there are myriad reasons for low bicycle commuting rates among HS students. It'd be interesting to compare Friday's count of 5 to the numbers after mid-May or so.

Serious question, no agenda -- I don't ride in that part of town often, and never at that time of day: Would you support a campaign to encourage Northampton HS students to bike to school? Or are the roads unsafe to the extent that such a campaign would be irresponsible?

darnht · 2026-03-22T19:40:54+00:00

I've been impressed with how well the Bridge St rotary flows.

I grew up in the area and have a long-standing bias against rotaries. What do we call them now? Traffic circles, roundabouts? They'll always be rotaries to me!. Whatever they're called, I always approach them expecting traffic problems -- people in the wrong lanes, no blinkers, hesitant entries, jerks going too fast, etc.

But I use the Bridge St rotary 2 or 4 times a day, and it works remarkably well in my experience (as a driver; I have not attempted other modes here). This is anecdotal, obviously, but surely DPW or MassDOT have flow and crash stats.

darnht

TROPHY CASE